Silence is golden. Then gold silenced the loudest words.
When Sally Pearson crouched at the blocks in Glasgow for the 100 metres hurdles final, defeating Tiffany Porter was only one of her concerns.
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Pearson had to first overcome the self-destructive idiocy of her own sport.
Pearson was captain of her Commonwealth Games team, the best athlete in Australia and a world and Olympic champion. This was not sufficient for her not to be treated like a naughty schoolgirl by bloody-minded autocrats.
![Sally Pearson, under tremendous pressure, wins the 100-metre hurdles at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170816154836im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/h/q/r/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvdg1b.png/1491826279007.jpg)
Athletics Australia had implemented a well-intended but foolishly restrictive policy that all team members had to attend a camp in Gateshead, England, ahead of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
It was to be a bonding moment for the team. Then it said if you don't attend the camp you lose some of your funding.
Three athletes didn't attend the camp. Discus thrower Ben Harradine was competing in Europe. Alex Rowe was invited to compete in the Diamond League meeting in Monaco. He went there and wooed the principality and its Prince with his run that equalled Ralph Doubell's Australian record.
Pearson was coming back from injury, was underdone and felt she needed more competitions, so she went to London and raced down The Mall at the Anniversary Games.
![Sally Pearson shares a laugh with athletics team coach Eric Hollingsworth in 2012.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170816154836im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/h/q/s/s/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvdg1b.png/1491826279007.jpg)
Simon Nathan, then Australia's head of high-performance, said the decisions of the athletes not to attend the camp but to compete instead was absolutely the correct choice for each of their high-performance preparations. Then he fined them for not turning up to the camp.
"I know it probably doesn't look like it or feel like it, [but] we are a sensible organisation," said Nathan in a press conference that could be forever used in media training as an example of how not to defend the ridiculous.
!["Pure relief": Sally Pearson enjoys her victory in Glasgow.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170816154836im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/h/q/r/e/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gvdg1b.png/1491826279007.jpg)
The funding issue was the final straw for Pearson. She had already had a complete relationship breakdown with the polarising then-head coach Eric Hollingsworth. As a result of that, a compromise had been reached that Pearson only needed to talk to Nathan. Then she couldn't talk to him either.
Hollingsworth was angry that Pearson had not been to the camp. Days before she was due to race, the head coach defied his superiors and organised for a media release to criticise Pearson.
Think about that for a moment: just days before Australia's best athlete is to compete, the country's head coach issues a press release in defiance of his employers to criticise that athlete.
Among other things, he said that Pearson had set a bad example to other athletes by not attending the camp.
Hollingsworth was suspended by AA and soon after, Australia's Commonwealth Games chef de mission Steve Moneghetti sent him home. He never returned to his job.
Athletes in the village celebrated when the coach left.
"It is really disappointing for a high-performance coach to give so much relief to athletes when you walk out the door," Pearson said of the day Hollingsworth was sent packing. "Actually our whole room was very excited."
Still, the pressure mounted. As she crouched on the blocks, the more compelling issue was how fast she could run and whether she could find something after having been injured for so long.
It's hard to envisage that pressure as Pearson waited for the gun to fire in the final.
"As an athlete any sport that you do, you have to hold it inside you. And it feels like it's going to explode," she said.
"That's what happens when you get out of the blocks: the emotion just pours into the race and you cross that finish line and you know that everything you've done, everything you've planned for has come together. It's great.
"I always thought that I could do it but it was a bit of a burden, a bit of negative energy that I did not need the day before my race especially.
"I think I ran faster after the finish line than I did in the race. The Olympics and then this one, crossing the finish line the feeling is pure relief more than anything.
"Obviously there is happiness and excitement, but the weight just comes off your shoulders. You should stop hearing your heartbeat all day, every night. That's just the best feeling in the world."